Back when Zotac's tiny ZBox Nano XS was first showcased at Cebit in March, we were very impressed by the compact form factor and just about everything else going for it. So, when Zotac offered us a chance to check out the ZBOX Nano XS AD11 Plus, we couldn't pass. The ZBox Nano XS AD11 Plus is a complete system rather than a barebone and it's packed in a chassis, with a smaller footprint than a DVD. However, it still has all the features that you'd would whether you are looking for a frugal office rig or HTPC system.

The ZBOX Nano line actually features a total of five different computers based on either AMD, VIA or Intel platforms. ZBOX Nano systems, measuring 127x127x45mm, are a bit larger than the ZBOX Nano XS, which measures just 106x106x37mm and it is one of the smallest x86 systems on the market today.

Features, looks and specifications

The Zotac ZBOX Nano XS AD11 comes in a simple box that clearly explains what you get with ZBOX Nano XS. The only obvious hint about its size is the "palm-sized mini-PC" line at the top, and that sums it up quite well. However, it's got a lot more going for it than sheer size.

Based on AMD's A50M chipset and dual-core E-450 APU, the Nano XS AD11 will not break any performance records but certainly keeps up with similar systems that we had a chance to compare it to. Zotac deserves praise for the deisgn, as they managed to squeeze practically every feature that you might need in a 10,6x10,6cm package and it is indeed a palm-sized PC.

Such dimensions, of course, came at a price. For example, Zotac had to stick with mSATA storage and an external WLAN adapter, but everything else ended up inside the Nano. The back side of the unit features two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI output and power jack.

The front is reserved for the card reader, ESATA/USB combo, power button, integrated IR sensor, microphone and headphones/optical combo jacks.

As was the case with all previously released ZBOX systems, the ZBOX Nano XS AD11 is also available as a barebone system in case you want to add your own mSATA storage and RAM. Zotac uses the "Plus" moniker to denote complete systems. In the case of the Nano XS, the Plus version comes equipped with a 64GB mSATA SSD and 2GB of DDR3 memory. Both models are shipped without an operating system, probably in order to keep the price down and allow users to choose between Windows or Linux.

The good side of the story is that even the barebone version comes with all the goodies inside the box including WiFi adapter, MCE-compatible remote, additional USB IR receiver that actually has a purpose, mini-optical to optical S/PDIF adapter and standard VESA mount.

The insides are accessed by simply unscrewing the four little feet that obviously double as thumbscrews. It's clever design.

As you can see, Zotac decided to go for Kingston’s 64GB mSATA SSD and 2GB of Samsung’s 1333MHz CL9 memory.

The Kingston 64GB SSD is rated at 255MB/s for sequential read and 170MB/s for sequential write with random read and write set at 11,000 and 3,000 IOPS. These specifications will definitely have a serious effect on benchmark results, so the Zotac ZBOX Nano XS AD11 Plus should end up significantly faster than nettops with traditional 5400rpm hard drives.

Closer look and benchmarks

When plugged in, the top part of the Zotac features a tiny LED light in the bottom left corner that glows red when powered off and green when powered on. Next to it is a blue HDD activity LED. The top is dominated by a large green glowing circle that can be switched off in BIOS, in case you find it too tacky. Intel-based ZBOX systems feature a blue circle, while VIA models proudly glow in yellow.

As noted earlier, Zotac ZBOX Nano XS comes bundled with MCE-compatible remote and an additional USB IR receiver. Bear in mind that it also has an integrated IR receiver below the start button and the additional USB IR receiver is used in case you want to use the supplied VESA mount and hang the ZBOX on the back of your monitor or TV making the integrated one inaccessible. (Note that if you plug the USB IR receiver it is advisable to disable the integrated one in BIOS since there is a possibility that it will read both signals and double all inputs from the remote).

Benchmarks

In 3DMark 06 Zotac’s ZBox Nano XS AD11 is, as expected, faster than the ZBox AD02 with E-350 APU, but still falls behind Shuttle XS35GTA V3 and its Atom D2700 and Radeon HD 7410M combination as well as Sapphire’s Edge HD2 with Atom D525 and Nvidia ION 2.

PCMark 07 tells a completely different story and the Nano XS AD11 Plus takes a clear lead against mini-PCs that we had a chance to put it against. Of course, the main reason is Kingston’s mSATA SSD as in Computation test, ZBox Nano is just below both Shuttle and Sapphire’s mini-PCs and just a tad bit faster than the Zotac AD02 with E-350 APU.

Cinebench R11.5 pretty much confirms all previous tests and Zotac’s ZBox Nano XS AD11 Plus with its E-450 APU ends up faster than ZBox Nano AD02 with E-350 as well as Sapphire Edge HD2 with Intel Atom D525+ION2 system.

Temperatures, noise and power consumption

As you can see from the CPUID Hardware Monitor screenshot below, the APU works at anywhere between 15 and 60 degrees Celsius, while the graphics part goes from 30 to 76 degrees Celsius.

The temperatures are quite understandable as due to its small size, the entire system is cooled by a single, relatively thin blower-style cooler that is in contact with both the E-450 APU and the A50M chipset. As you can see the fan, when set to work in smart mode in BIOS, spins anywhere between 2400 RPM and 4400RPM. Even at its highest 4400RPM value that we have seen, you can only hear it if you get close to it as it surprisingly does not produce a high-pitch sound that is characteristic of small fans.

Of course, bear in mind that these high values for both temperature and fan speed are achieved under full load and extensive benchmarking and it is highly unlikely that you’ll ever see those in normal usage.

Power consumption is pretty decent as according to our measurement it draws about 0.5W in standby, 12 to 14W in idle and up to 29W under full load.

Conclusion

It is quite hard to find something wrong about the Nano XS AD11, but it is also quite hard to compare it to other mini-PCs as it has a unique form factor and tiny footprint.

Of course it is not the fastest thing on the market, but it is still packs quite a punch when compared to much larger systems. The E-450 is a well balanced processor, capable of delivering enough performance to cope with pretty much anything you throw at it, but at the same time it's not too pricey or too hot. Of course, any serious gaming is out of the question but if you are looking for an office PC or a home theater system, ZBox Nano XS is definitely worth taking into consideration. Pair it up with either Linux or Windows, throw in the XBMC media center and you'll get one heck of an HTPC system.

The €320/US $315 price tag for the ZBox Nano XS AD11 Plus might sound a bit steep but if you add all the features up, especially the Kingston SSD, you’ll see that you would end up with a similar price tag on much larger systems. The sheer size of the ZBox Nano XS AD11 Plus is impressive and it is definitely its best selling point. The barebone version sells at around €220/US $220.

As for the downsides, 64GB of storage is just about enough for a system drive, so external storage is a must. That’s where eSATA and USB 3.0 connectivity come in handy, but the most elegant solution would be to hook it up to a NAS unit. Considering the performance and responsiveness of an SSD-based system, it’s a fair tradeoff in our book.

Even with all this in mind, recommending the Nano XS is a no-brainer and if you are looking for a decent media center for your living room or an office PC that you can strap to the back of your monitor, Zotac's ZBox Nano XS AD11 is definitely the way to go.

Zotac has been working hard on getting its smallest ZBOX to the market and the wait is finally over as Zotac has now officially launched the Zotac ZBOX nano XS. As we already wrote, the new ZBOX nano XS features AMD's E-450 APU packed inside an incredibly small 106x106x37mm chassis.

The full name of this little HTPC is Zotac ZBOX nano XS AD11 Plus and it will be available only as a fully assembled HTPC and not as a barebone, at least for now. As noted, it features AMD's dual-core E-450 APU clocked at 1.65GHz with AMD Radeon HD 6320 GPU with 80 shaders. Unlike the E-350, this one features Turbo mode for the GPU part and works at 508MHz with Turbo set at 600MHz. The E-450 APU is definitely a better move as it gives a slightly better performance while maintaining the same 18W TDP. The rest of the specs include 2GB of DDR3 memory, two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports, combo USB/eSATA port, card reader and Gigabit Ethernet.

In order to pack it in a 106x106x37mm chassis, Zotac was forced to make some changes here and unlike its previous ZBox HTPCs, this one will feature 64GB mSATA SSD rather than a standard 2.5-inch HDD. Also, Zotac was forced to ditch the integrated WiFi, but has bundled the rater cute USB 2.0 802.11n WiFi adapter as well as MCE compatible remote with USB IR recevier, which definitely makes it an ultimate HTPC. We must note that we are quite impressed as there is a handful of features packed inside a chassis that fits in the palm of your hand.

Unfortunately, the list of features and SSD certainly makes it a bit more expensive but considering what you get, it still sounds like a good deal. The new ZOTAC nano XS AD11 Plus is currently listed online with a price tag set at €349, while the bigger ZBOX nano AD10 Plus with E-350 APU and 320GB HDD sells for €284 in the same shop.

We managed to dig up a bit more info regarding the new Zotac ZBox that was showcased at Cebit and it looks like this tiny rig will pack a serious punch, courtesy of AMD's E-450 APU.

The first clue came from the color of the circle on the top of the new ZBox, as Zotac has a clear way of differentiating its ZBox devices, blue is for Intel, orange is for VIA and, as you could guess, green is for ZBox devices based on AMD platform.

We managed to dig around a bit and it appears that the new ZBox will be packing AMD's dual core E-450 APU clocked at 1.65GHz. The E-450 APU comes with Radeon HD 6320 GPU that packs 80 shaders and, unlike the E-350's Radeon HD 6310 GPU, works at 508MHz with Turbo set at 600MHz.

The E-450 choice is pretty logical as it provides somewhat better performance at the same 18W TDP. The E-450 choice means that the new ZBox will certainly pack a nice performance punch packed in a small 106x106x37mm enclosure.

The new ZBox mini-PC is currently expected to show up in early Q2 and although the price wasn't mentioned, we must note that it might end up just a tad bit more expensive as it uses SSD instead of the standard HDD. Of course, SSD prices have never been lower so we don't expect a major price hit.

The Tech Report crew managed to score some of last bits and pieces of improtant information regarding Sapphire's upcoming Edge HD3 nettop and according to their sources, this AMD E-450 equipped little fellow should appear in retail/e-tail as of February with a base price set at US $300.

In case you missed it, the Edge HD3 will feature AMD's E-450 GPU dual-core APU clocked at 1.65GHz with Radeon HD 6320 graphics. Ther rest of the features (those seen at CES 2012) include 320GB HDD and 4GB of DDR3 memory, as well as two USB 2.0 ports, an USB 3.0 port, Ethernet port, VGA and HDMI outtpus and even an integrated WiFi. The power consumpiton is rated at around 30W.

As noted, the Sapphire Edge HD3 should show up in retail/e-tail in February with a base price set at US $300 (€234).

At CES 2012 in Las Vegas, Sapphire detailed its newest Edge HD3 mini PC that will finally get some AMD love and pack AMD's latest Zacate APU, the E-450.

Sapphire has been in the nettop business for quite some time with its Edge mini PCs but for some reason was sticking only to Intel Atom D525 CPU in combination with Nvidia's ION2 GPU (on the Edge HD2) or the Intel Atom D510 in combination with the same ION 2 GPU (on the Edge HD). Luckily, now it is all over with Intel as Sapphire is preparing the Edge HD3 with AMD's E-450 APU.

In case you missed it, the E-450 ticks at 1.65GHz, has 1MB (2x512KB) of L2 cache, features Radeon HD 6320 GPU working at 508MHz (600MHz in Turbo mode) with 80 shaders units, has support for DDR3-1333 memory and a 18W TDP. Actually, this will be the only nettop (at least in Europe) with E-450 APU, of course, if Sapphire launches it soon.

There aren't that many details regarding the full Edge HD3 spec, but according to our info, it could end up with 4GB of DDR3 memory, 320GB HDD and will feature USB 3.0 connectivity.

Unfortunately, the price or the actual release date haven't been announced. Pictures of the Edge HD3 are scarse but Techpowerup managed to score a pretty good one. You can find the original picture here.

The humble Brazos platform was arguably AMD’s best product of 2011, both in terms of competiveness and the sheer number of design wins. From feature packed nettops and barebones, through cheap netbooks to dozens of ITX boards, Brazos managed to beat Intel’s Atom at its own game and seize an impressive chunk of the market, first and foremost thanks to superior value for money and some advanced features that Atoms can only dream of.

Small wonder, then, that long time ATI/AMD partner Sapphire was one of the first to embrace the new chips and offer them in micro-ITX flavour. Interestingly, the company offered Brazos boards, the Sapphire PURE White Fusion Mini we are testing today, and the PURE Fusion Mini, which offers a few additional features and relies on SO-DIMM memory rather than plain DDR3 modules. So, the White version is a simpler and cheaper design, which is by no means a bad thing. We are talking about frugal computing here, no need for bells and whistles, a decent price tag and feature set will do.

As far as the design goes, there is nothing out of the ordinary to report, it’s more or less your standard Brazos ITX board. However, a few of our staffers found it amusing that a board dubbed Pure White Fusion features a sleek black PCB, which made us think that someone at Sapphire has a healthy British sense of humour.

Although this is the cheaper of Sapphire’s two Brazos boards, and for that matter one of the cheapest ones on the market, the designers still managed to squeeze in solid-state capacitors without breaking the bank. However, the board lacks some features found on high-end Brazos products, including USB 3.0 and eSATA. Other than that, the specs are pretty much in line with the rest of the Brazos crowd: 1.6GHz E-350 APU with HD 6310 graphics, 2 DDR3 DIMM slots, 1 PCIe x16 slot (x4 in the real world), 4 external USB 2.0 ports and headers for four more, Ethernet, three audio jacks and video output is catered to by VGA, DVI and HDMI ports.

The APU is actively cooled by a tiny, but relatively quite fan, while the A50M chipset is cooled by a neat black heatsink. The layout is pretty straightforward, but it’s really not too important. Since we are talking about an integrated ITX board, consumers probably won’t be plugging too much stuff into it anyway. Speaking of which, BIOS options are rather limited, but then again few people would tinker with an ITX board and overclocking/underclocking support is uncommon on integrated ITX boards.

So, what’s missing on this entry level board? As it turns out, not much. Of course, it would be nice to see USB 3.0 and eSATA, but at this price point you just can’t find an ITX board that has them. The same applies to onboard WiFi, which would have been a nice touch but it is still reserved for pricier models.

We guess a lot of people have old wireless USB adapters they can recycle anyway, but this means they will be down to three USB ports. A separate wireless keyboard and mouse combo will take up an additional two, which means there is just one left for external storage, or perhaps a TV tuner. Of course, you can use the extra USB headers for an additional four devices and it is always a good idea to check the layout of any ITX chassis you choose. Most feature two USB ports on the front, but some models sacrifice practicality for design, so the USB ports might be poorly placed or located under a flimsy plastic flap, which is hardly a good solution.

The layout is pretty straightforward and you shouldn’t have much trouble with the build. USB headers, LED and fan connectors should give you no trouble. The same applies to the four orange SATA 6Gbps ports, but you will find access to them a bit cramped in some chassis designs. Of course, this is a minor issue and few people will use more than two SATA ports anyway.

The placement of DIMM slots is unproblematic and the board supports up to 8GB of DDR3 1333 memory, which is more than enough for any HTPC.

The board also features a PCIe 2.0 x16 slot (x4 electrically, of course). We guess most users won’t use it, but it could come in handy for some future upgrades. This is where AMD has a clear advantage over Intel. Brazos supports faster DDR3 memory, and more of it. Many cheap Atom boards still cling to DDR2, which is slower and twice as expensive as DDR3. In addition, Brazos boards ship with PCIe 2.0 and SATA 6Gbps support, offering greater flexibility and upgradeability. A couple of years down the road users can squeeze some extra performance from their Brazos rigs, with cheap-low profile discrete graphics or speedy SATA 6Gbps solid state storage, which really isn’t the case with Atom boards.

Performance

In terms of performance, the E-350 is hardly a new product and there is not much point in running a bunch of comprehensive tests. It’s faster than current generation Atoms, but bear in mind that Cedar Trail should be out any day now. Even AMD launched the updated E-450 a couple of months back, but there is a catch – you can’t actually buy any.

Cedar Trail, Intel’s much touted next generation 32nm Atom was supposed to launch in Q3 and retailers have been listing Intel’s first Cedar Trail boards for weeks, yet they are nowhere to be found. To some extent the same applies to E-450 products. They are available in a handful of netbooks, but not in micro-ITX format and the vast majority of Brazos products are still based on the good old E-350. Besides, the E-450 offers only a minor performance boost, so you really won’t be missing out on anything if you go for the E-350 instead.

There is no clear or simple explanation for this, although Intel faced some driver issues with Cedar Trail graphics, but we reckon it also has something to do with the sharp decline in netbook shipments and there is a chance both AMD and Intel are affraid of being stuck with inventories of old chips, so we wouldn’t hold our breath waiting for their successors.

Let’s kick off with the customary CPU-Z, GPU-Z and 3dmark06 screens.

Sadly, we couldn’t get our hands on any E-450 or Cedar Trail gear, so it is really hard to say how the E-350 stacks up against these upcoming platforms. We can only compare to it to Intel’s Atom D525 with ION2 graphics and another E-350 system from Zotac.

In most PCmark7 benches, the E-350 easily outpaces the Atom, apart from the creativity score, which favors the multithreded Atom.

To some extent this also applies to CineBench tests, the Atom does rather well, but only on account of HT support.

In Aida64, the Atom comes out on top on account of its superior FPU, HT and somewhat higher clock (1.86GHz vs. 1.6GHz)

The results might seem like a draw, but in real life applications Brazos will outperform any Atom system, regardless of clock, or the aid of Nvidia graphics. The E-350 simply delivers superior performance where it really counts when it comes to HTPCs. In graphics, browsing and even power consumption, it is somewhat superior to even the fastest Atom chips. Intel on the other hand has a clear advantage in heavily threaded applications and transcoding, which is really not your average HTPC workload, unless you plan to use iTunes on a daily basis.

Conclusion

We have no trouble recommending the PURE White Fusion to anyone looking for a Brazos board on a budget.

At €80 it is one of the cheapest E-350 boards on the market and only ASRock and Gigabyte offer comparable boards in terms of features, performance and pricing. For some reason US consumers will have a bit more trouble and a lot less choice if they opt for an entry-level Brazos board, as some of these boards are rather hard to come by across the pond.

So, it offers good value compared to its Brazos siblings, but what about cheap and abundant Atom boards? Well, it does not look good for Intel. The cheapest Atom D525 boards cost about €59, which sounds like a fair deal. However, they use either DDR2 or DDR3 SO-DIMM memory which negates much of the price advantage after you factor in, say 4GB of RAM. Furthermore, cheap Atom boards feature Intel GMA 3150 graphics, which should probably be banned by the UN Security Council as an affront to humanity. Basically you can forget about HDMI or DVI.

Only one scenario in which Atom D525 boards sans ION2 graphics should even be considered comes to mind – if you are looking for a silent, passively cooled office nettop that will never do anything remotely entertaining and you already have a VGA-only monitor on your desk. If this is not the case, and it probably isn’t, join the club and get a Brazos board.

According to a report over at Computerbase.de, AMD plans to refresh it Brazos lineup with Brazos 2.0 parts in Q1 2012. The second Brazos generation will also bring new names to both CPU and GPU parts.

Brazos 2.0 will feature updated Zacate APUs as well as higher clocked GPUs. The E-450 will get a replacement in the name of E2-1800. The CPU part practically remains the same deal except for slight boost in clock set at 1.7GHz. The GPU will be rebranded to HD 7430 and will end up clocked at 523MHz (680MHz with Turbo). The E2-1800 CPU part could also get a Turbo mode that should differentiate it from the E-450 part.

The E-300 part will be replaced by the E1-1200 clocked at 1.4GHz while the GPU part will be rebranded to HD 7310. Brazos 2.0 also brings a new mobile chipset, the A68M. The A68M looks like a cut back version of the A50M as it features only two SATA 6Gbps and eight USB 2.0 ports and two USB 3.0 ports. It also comes with native DisplayPort support as well as RAID 0 and RAID 1 support. Of course, all of these cutbacks are meant to cut power consumption making the Brazos 2.0 platform ideal for those ultra-thin and netbook platforms.

The new addition is also the Brazos-T platform designed for tablets. This one is also scheduled for Q1 2012 and will use the A55T chipset combined with the Hondo APU. This combination should bring significantly lower power consumption when compared to the current Z-01 tablet APU platform.

The new Q1 2012 scheduled Brazos 2.0 platform will live until we see the 28nm Wichita and Krishna APUs scheduled for "later in 2012".

MSI has added, or rather updated its line of Wind Box nettops with a new DC100 based on AMD's Brazos platform.

The 191.8x150.93x34.94mm larger and 830g heavy DC100 features AMD's latest E-450 APU featuring two Bobcat cores that work at 1.65GHz and Radeon HD 6320 graphics part. The full list of specs include 2GB of memory that can be upgraded to 4GB, a 320GB HDD, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11bgn WiFi, 5.1-channel audio with optical SPDIF, D-Sub and HDMI outputs and a total of six USB 2.0 ports.

According to MSI's product page, the new DC100 has an average power consumptiom of 40W and runs very quietly, at below 22dB.

The new Wind Box DC100 will be shipped with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OS. The price or the actual release date haven't been announced.

Asus has updated its micro-ATX motherboard lineup with yet another model, the E45M1-M Pro featuring AMD's E-450 APU. Listed on Asus' site, together with the rest of the E-350 based motherboards, the new E45M1-M Pro is currently the only Asus motherboard with the E-450 APU.

Although it looks identical to the E35M1-M Pro, the main update is under the big passive heatsink that now hides the new E-450 APU. The E-450 is clocked at 1.65GHz, features two Bobcat cores and packs Radeon HD 6320 graphics with 80 stream processors. Altough it just looks like a 50MHz clock bump, when compared to the E-350, the E-450 also features AMD's TurboCore that takes the GPU clock from 500MHz all the way up to 600MHz.

As far as the specs are concerned, this one is identical to the previously released E35M1-M Pro and features a PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slot, PCI-Express x1 and two PCI slots, two memory slots with support for up to 8GB of DDR3-1600 memory. It has five SATA 6Gbps ports and one eSATA port, Realtek's 8-channel audio, Gigabit LAN, two USB 3.0 and twelve USB 2.0 ports.

It also comes with Asus' EPU, Protect 3, Turbo Key and UEFI BIOS features. The motherboard features DVI, HDMI and D-Sub outputs. Unfortunately, the price or the precise availability date haven't been announced.

MSI has rolled out a new notebook powered by AMD's E-450 APU, the CR430. As part of MSI's Classic notebook series the new notebook should have a rather affordable price tag and with a 14-inch screen it might have a perspective future on retail/e-tail shelves.

As noted, the new CR430 features AMD's E-450 APU with two Bobcat cores ticking at 1.65GHz that are paired up with Radeon HD 6320 graphics part. The rest of the spec includes a 14-inch LED-backlit 1366x768 screen, up to 640GB of HDD space, DVD Super Multi optical drive, 802.11bgn WiFi, Gigabit LAN, HD 720p webcam, one optional USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 port, HDMI and VGA outputs and a 6-cell 4400mAh battery.

The new 14-incher measures 344.4x221x28mm and weighs in at around 2.2kg. It will feature MSI's ECO engine that should improve the battery life.

Unfortunately, the price hasn't been announced but we'll keep an eye out for it as it should hit retail/e-tail shelves pretty soon.